


old enchantments, made new

by unicorns



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Second Age, i always end up writing eagles for some reason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 13:20:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2582882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicorns/pseuds/unicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no peace at the intersection of love and duty.</p><p> </p><p>(Or, Erestor and Glorfindel go on the third worst road trip ever.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the hard road

It was near to pitch dark when Erestor and his fifteen-man contingent came to relieve Glorfindel for the overnight march along the Bruinen. Despite the scarce, watery light provided by the few torches they had chanced, the deep lines of wear in his brow and at the corners of his mouth were uncomfortably stark, his movements almost mechanical as he led his men down the short decline made difficult by icy river pebbles that shifted precariously underfoot here and there, as though he moved only by force of will and in spite of being long past his body's limits.

 

He was obviously tired, and cold. They were all tired and cold. Winter had stolen up hard and fast behind Elrond's company and what survivors of Hollin had been salvaged from the wreck of its capital and though there was no doubt that Ereinion would furnish supplies to see them through, the waiting fear that they would suffer more deaths for want of surgeons and supplies in the interim was sometimes worse than the thought of having their camp discovered. Having to butcher horses, beloved companions as much as beasts of burden, had quickly exacted a crippling blow to their ranks and if the gravity of the situation had not yet hit the general population before, it was obvious to everyone now.

 

The river was uncharacteristically quiet, and the lonely sound of approaching footfalls echoed pertly in the barren pit of the bank. Until as recently as the week before, it had tumbled down the innumerable shelves of rock so loudly that the roar of it could be heard leagues off, long after it had ceased to be within view. It was easier now to patrol the area, if only because the ice was thick enough to cross in some places, but this was such a small comfort in the grand scheme of things that no one would think to bother voicing it.

 

"Elrond has sent for you," was Erestor's brief greeting, his breath visible against the night as blue wisps of air. Glorfindel wondered how long it had been since he'd slept.

 

"We convened this morning before I left, what does he need?"

 

Erestor shrugged, though the motion was labored and weak. "He may want someone to scout ahead for Ereinion's men before the snows come in earnest but he did not tell me so himself. Celeborn has the northern march, else I think he would go."

 

It was a feat of will to keep from blowing out a long, tired breath. Probably half of his own soldiers had eaten that day. None of Erestor's looked any more rested. There was little worse than starvation drawn out by the intermittent meals, but the danger he had learned to fear on the Ice was in the inevitability of hopelessness, when it seemed easier to fade than to fight through the daily struggle of gnawing hunger and immobility, and for a people who had already survived so much it seemed immensely unfair to see them lost to that indignity.

 

"I'll go to him in the morning," he said, switching his gaze to his contingent, its members already milling around close together waiting to be dismissed for the long, slow trudge back to camp. "Send back those eight of yours at the rear and I'll keep eight of my own. We can divide the watch."

 

It took a moment, but something like the veil of impertinent pride he had lost in transition from archivist to soldier had come back to Erestor's features, his lips twitching upwards. He shouldered past Glorfindel and accepted one of the torches from Glorfindel's second, a silver-haired archer formerly of Celeborn's host named Gwendris. In the new light his face seemed to soften, his dark, unremarkable eyes narrowing critically.

 

"Is Manwë's favorite denying a direct order?"

 

"Only delaying on answering it. Go, send them to their wives before they buckle where they stand. Mine are better rested."

 

Erestor didn't have the luxury of inciting the argument Glorfindel could see waiting as an untranslated impulse in his jaw, but his answering silence as he began over the sheet of ice and towards the treeline, eight men fewer, was a sign of his grudging gratitude enough.  


* * *

 

 

"There you are."

 

Dawn had an awakening effect on what lay dormant in the valley during the bitterly cold nights, and despite the subdued air of the camp, everyone seemed in better spirits than they had when he'd left the day before, going about their morning chores singing or chatting amicably with their neighbors as though the horror of Ost-in-Edhil was nothing more than the lingering imprint of a nightmare. What Glorfindel had looked on as a frozen hellscape only a few hours prior now felt like a living thing that breathed in time with his heartbeat, beech branches bowing lazily in the early morning breeze and thick bands of sunlight reflecting off the high white walls of the cliffs that girded the ghyll. Elrond, at least, seemed marginally more alert than Erestor had, his tired smile marshaling again when Glorfindel finally made it through the flap of his tent.

 

"Apologies for the delay, I chose to stay overnight at the Bruinen with Erestor." Glorfindel managed a barely-contrite smile before Elrond could interrogate him, which he secretly regarded as a victory for something achieved so abysmally early in the morning. "It seemed the more prudent use of the night."

 

Elrond laughed mirthlessly. "He was with the masons all yesterday, something about a quarry. I wonder that he wasn't dead on his feet, the old mule."

 

Commiserating about their mutual friend's notoriously difficult temperament was long past anything more than a waste of breath; they both knew better than to start pointing out the ways the last few months had uniquely conspired with Erestor's personality to make him somehow even more self-possessed, but that, even left unspoken, suffused Glorfindel with a raw, painful pulse of nostalgia. No more than a year ago they had been three, a unit who met for aperitifs every other night in Elrond's antechamber and scathingly discussed the sometimes ridiculous interpersonal politics of Gil-galad's council, or the weather, or the latest embezzlement scandal or broken engagement like old hens. "I have an errand for you. A few of the horses are still strong enough to bear the journey."

"The convoy from Ereinion?"

 

"Not quite." Elrond tapped his knee in thought, motioning to the opposite side of the tent, where Glorfindel folded himself to sit. Even with his limbs drawn in he seemed to spill over the tarp floor, an issue he had found to be omnipresent since his rebirth; the Elves of the latter ages had not inherited their foremothers' general size. "The Lady Galadriel and her daughter. This is only a matter of escorting them to Celeborn and so a large party will be unnecessary, but if you prefer an attendant, Gwendris would do well."

 

Glorfindel nodded a little belatedly, temporizing around a low hum. "Gwendris might be better use to the men I leave behind; she has a firmer hand with them than I do, I think." He laughed, the fine, downy white hairs of his arm standing to attention where an errant ray of sunlight shot through the gap in the tent opening and over his skin. "If you can spare him, I'd prefer to take Erestor with me."

 

"I didn't think he would leave, or I might have asked him to go."

 

"Give him a sextant and a ream of vellum and I will have him map the way. If it's a fear of idleness that keeps him here, that will do amply for him."

 

That earned him a quick smile. Elrond didn't acquiesce right away, his attention averting to the wide shaft of light that had split the middle of the tent and would have divided them if Glorfindel had not been so long or so wide even in reclining. His expression had transmuted into something that looked very annoyingly like one Glorfindel had come to expect of his niece when she had known something two minutes before her father did, long centuries before. In the first few weeks of his arrival into Forlond Glorfindel had made a project of studying his face whenever the opportunity to do so in relative anonymity had appeared, searching for Idril in the composition of his features or in his physical mannerisms. He'd been roundly disappointed, of course—Elrond was Lúthien's child before he was anyone else's—but there seemed to linger some buoyant tenacity in his nature that satisfied his curiosity and need for familiarity well enough where nothing else did.

 

Not for anyone else would he have suffered this, he thought. He could swear his life to Elrond's service freely, knowing there was no felicity, no joy like the nights the three of them had spent watching the tides lap the shore until the cock crow drove them to their rooms.

 

"Well, then," Elrond said at last, rising and making for the tent flap, which he pulled back and indicated with a gesture and another soft, genial smile. "Mind his teeth and ride hard."


	2. the new road, the old road

There were certain privileges to errand-running, not the least of them being access to rations, which had largely been Glorfindel's motivation in bringing Erestor along. He'd half suspected, as they departed the camp in silence astride two lean but stout horses who had been well enough to narrowly avoid the butcher's rack, that Erestor resented the favor, but after a full day of riding through the bright white monotony of Eriador and towards the foothills of the Hithaeglir he was glad for the distraction. The sky was gray and the peaks of the mountains frothed with wreaths of heavy, wet clouds, but there was nothing more than passing dustings of snow to complicate the journey, a small mercy for which Glorfindel was immensely thankful.

 

It was early into the moonless second night when they finally broke for camp beneath the dark eaves of a pine bluff. The horses cropped miserably at what browse could still be found, perhaps glad to be out of the immediate danger of being eaten but not too shy to let the resident elves know they were unhappy with the breakneck pace they had set. Between both riders there had been perhaps four words spoken since their departure out of the valley, and Glorfindel found himself dwelling at length on the radical change the last few months had enacted on his friendships with Elrond and Erestor the way he had the morning he had spent in Elrond's confidence, what seemed like a short eternity ago.

 

One thing that had managed to survive the transition, however, was Erestor's uncanny ability to read lesser men's thoughts, and he proved that a moment later when, in the middle of weaving pine branches together to form the roof of their shelter, he looked up and leveled a mildly irritated glance at Glorfindel across the short gradient that separated them.

 

"Is there something you need?"

 

"Hm?"

 

"You have been staring very intently at that tree."

 

Glorfindel laughed, too glad of the sudden release of tension to be affronted. He rose to put himself to use inspecting the horses, which they bore with reluctant huffs, picking up their legs when bidden but otherwise doing no more to aid him along. This was an easy chance for the meandering conversations he had missed from Lindon, he supposed, so he thought a moment, lightly patting his buckskin's croup.

 

"I was thinking about Dorgund." He had not actually thought about Dorgund once since Elrond had mustered them out of Lindon. He wasn't sure he would ever think about him again. "With you out of the way he'll have been promoted to the head of Ereinion's council, I'm sure."

 

As much as he wanted to, he made a studious effort to keep from searching for Erestor's expression, though he could imagine a composite well enough from years of having seen him react with barely-veiled disdain whenever meetings ran long, or they had to suffer through someone pontificating on some issue or another long after he'd decided was useful to the King. Elrond had unapologetically enjoyed the sport of watching him in council sessions, and he'd always made an effort to include Glorfindel whenever the opportunity presented itself, but they had been friends for far longer than Glorfindel had with either of them, and to do so seemed, even decades later, like a liberty too great to take.

 

For a moment he was uncertain Erestor even heard him, but at length the former counselor moved to join their one-man-two-horse party at the bottom of the brief slope, his knuckles and fingertips damasked pink from the cold and streaked with fragrant pine resin leftover from his work. His own horse crowded up to him, affectionately lipping at a skein of hair that had escaped the leather cord binding it back from his temples.

 

"I wonder if he'll die now that he doesn't have the motivation of trying to ruin my career to keep his black old heart beating," he quipped, lifting a hand to halfheartedly reprimand his mount.

 

"I'm in no doubt that he'll find ample consolation in having a whole council to lord over all on his own."

 

Erestor looked askance at him, one eyebrow elevating in surprise. "That may be the sharpest thing I've heard you say of anyone. Denying orders, being critical of your peers—where has the saint I knew gone?"

 

Again, he knew he should have taken it as a reprimand, but Glorfindel could only laugh, contritely lowering his eyes to the ground. The ice had been shirred into slush by their boots, and it gave the area the effect of glass a strong wind away from shattering into innumerable pinprick-sized pieces. "I find that there is little I miss of what I left behind and that has soured my memory. In fact, I wonder that I didn't go mad with boredom now that I have the benefit of hindsight."

 

"It was a very uninteresting few centuries. Certainly nothing like Hithlum." Erestor's horse, unsatisfied with the amount of attention it was getting, pushed its nose into his chest, and Erestor's palm slid up to card through the forelock resting between its eyes. "The lean-to is finished. I'll take the first watch."

 

There was some discordant note in the timbre of Erestor's voice, but it had come and gone almost as soon as it had registered. Glorfindel glanced up again, brows knitted, knowing even before he had looked that there would be nothing in Erestor's expression that might have given anything away—he had not, after all, ascended to his place of honor at Ereinion's table without learning that frustrating inscrutability that was sometimes mirrored in Elrond's face. Seeming not to notice (or choosing not to), Erestor began up the incline to their shelter, his horse plodding heavily along after him.

 

In spite of all Glorfindel's suspicions that he would cryptically leave it there, as was typical of him, Erestor paused mid-step, peering at him over his shoulder. "You miss nothing of Lindon, Glorfindel?"

 

Half reflex, his mouth tilted into a smile. There were things he missed, yes—the mellow white breakfast wines Cirdan brought to weekly court functions, the overstuffed chair he'd spent long years breaking in to his taste, probably still sitting in his antechamber, the morning screeching of seabirds on the shore, the massive ivory climbing roses that grew beneath his windows like kite tails. Not being hungry. Warmth. Listening to Elrond read to the both of them when the summer heat made such outdoor excursions almost a necessity. His own bed, the summer march.

 

"Nothing," he said, and despite all of the other answers that seemed natural to give, it was true. "Everything I held dear in Lindon is with me now."

 

Erestor looked at him a long moment, but seemed to think better of replying, and began back up the hill.  


* * *

 

 

It was not in Glorfindel's nature to want. He had been a prince, once, and he had wanted things when he had thought that happiness was the wage of material desire in the peaceful tedium of Taniquetil. But the exodus out of Valinor and his intimate acquaintance with loss upon the Ice had taught him that to want was to open the byway through which the hairline flaws of the Eldar's natures stole into their hearts; Fëanor had wanted beyond some invisible, arbitrary line of what was acceptable to want, and in the terrible immensity of his desires, he had changed the geography of the earth forever.

 

But Glorfindel wanted, and the vehemence of it almost frightened him. It was natural to love, surely, and he had accepted his love for Elrond and for Ereinion and Celeborn and Galadriel with little fanfare, but this was not the tie of blood and duty; this was subtler, more insidious, solely the work of his traitorous heart, which he had long resigned to the dormant silence common of the Elves. He wanted, and his heart was blissfully unconcerned that he had not been given license to act on his own behalf in his return to Arda, or that he was no more a walking sword-arm than he was a man.

 

Despite all of the ensuing weirdness, the two of them had huddled closely together with the horses to either extreme of them, finding the night just mild enough to facilitate going without a watchfire. The haft of Erestor's spear lay at rest over his boots though they had agreed there was very little danger of discovery here when there had been not so much as a sighting of anything but animal prints and long trails of deer tracks for miles. Erestor was not entirely at ease, but the deep, undulant motions of his chest rising and falling in the dim midnight told Glorfindel that he had abdicated the responsibility of the second half of the night watch enough to sleep, which Glorfindel decided to take as a compliment.

 

There was nothing else to watch from their vantage point, Glorfindel thought, his weak attempt to justify his frequent surreptitious glances down at his companion. His earlier admission to Erestor had brought with it the uncomfortable mutual discovery of this thing that lay between them, and he felt it press heavy as an iron yoke around the both of them. What he'd said in haste had backhandedly revealed a deeper truth that neither of them had been ready to acknowledge so far from the civility of court life, where they had the advantage of being able to seek space or time alone to reflect.

 

His only consolation was that Erestor could—and likely would—spare his feelings by not demanding more than he was ready to give, if he wanted anything of it at all, if only in the service of finishing their errand without accidentally mutilating their work rapport.

 

Slips of the sky were visible through the overhang of branches, but Glorfindel found the vast black field cold and indifferent and resolutely silent against his plight.

 

"Your thoughts are very loud," came a low, drowsy voice beside him, and it took a concentrated effort from Glorfindel to keep from starting.

 

"You might stop listening."

 

"There is nothing else to do," said Erestor with a sleepy, dismissive gesture, stretching out one leg beyond the protection of their canvas-insulated roof. "If the horses were not so tired I'd suggest we give up the pretense of resting and break camp."

 

Glorfindel shook his head, a fond set to his smile. "We leave at dawn and that is soon enough. Elrond would never countenance letting you go on without rest. What did you do before you had someone to remind you that you are only presumptively immortal?"

 

There would have been silence if not for the sound of Erestor shifting, perhaps uncomfortable with the inquiry into the life he had led before Elrond's interests had moved him to Ereinion's side. "I don't remember."

 

Erestor was the only elf Glorfindel had ever known who seemed to be able to give duplicitous half-answers without a single tell to give him away where others would dare only a lie by omission under the worst circumstances. _He is lying now_ , Glorfindel thought, struggling for some obvious drawback of his personality with which to entice his heart away from the precipice it had pushed him to, but it only throbbed in his chest, wounded at Erestor's sudden retreat into himself.

 

He didn't chase the subject, his attention returning to the pennant of stars overhead for want of anything else to look at. Erestor was silent so long that Glorfindel thought perhaps he'd gone back to sleep, board-still and folded against his knees to conserve their shared heat, but at length his voice interceded on the quiet again, slow with hesitance.

 

"I really don't. My life before Elrond was somehow even more impossibly boring than it was in Lindon. Endless campaigns under Fingon, then under Cirdan, then under Gil-galad." Mouth tight, he pushed his spear to the side, reclining to rest against the wide trunk at their backs. "And the parts that weren't are far from worth remembering."

 

"Nothing?"

 

"No. Does it matter?"  
  
"I suppose not, I only thought there might have been someone somewhere else who did not enable you like your men do," Glorfindel shrugged, then immediately regretted it when he realized what his question must have sounded like in the shadow of his earlier confession, that Erestor could well read the tint of fear of former attachments that he had obviously not tried hard enough to avoid. "That is to say, I meant—"

 

"I have it on good authority that former kings found that _useful_ ," Erestor pointed out, seeming just as desperate to head off Glorfindel's contingency effort as he was, a strange, waxy flush climbing his cheeks. For the sake of not getting punched in the mouth, and in defense of the similar color on his own face, he diligently did not mention it. "But—but no, Lord Gondolin, excepting Elrond, my life has been a solitary one."

 

Was that an acknowledgement, or a dismissal? Years of close confidence with the Noldo at his side had not adequately prepared him to be able to decipher that in any useful way. He was vexed by the wary circles they seemed to be making, no nearer to an understanding than they had been only hours ago.

 

"We have that in common, then," he said, if only to fill the silence.

 

The air between them was tight, the tension of a bowstring drawn to full extension, for a reason Glorfindel could not pinpoint. Erestor looked sidelong at him, idly picking at the ties of his armguard.

 

"I do not know my own feelings, but you needn't reprimand yourself for freely sharing yours on my account," he sighed at last, perhaps exhausted by the runaround they were giving one another that was at odds with the easy nature of their relationship. "Your candor and your honesty make you a terrible politician and an even worse Bastard Brag player, but a very good friend, Glorfindel, and had Elrond given this errand to me, I would have had no other at my side."

 

Such a compliment, obnoxiously given as it was, would have elated him yesterday, but Glorfindel smiled again and found that the suggestion of hope had rent a tear into a particularly tender part of his soul. They could leave it there, he knew, and Erestor wouldn't pursue the conversation for the sake of his pride and Glorfindel's, but he found himself reaching across the half-inch of space that divided them, seeking out Erestor's cool, slim hand and taking it in his own. The ropy muscles in the captive arm tensed up for a fraction of a moment. He brushed his lips over the line of Erestor's knuckles, then relaxed his grip.

 

They woke that morning with their hands still loosely folded together, and Glorfindel liked to think Erestor only reluctantly parted them when they rose to attend the horses.  


* * *

 

 

The Hithaeglir were not impassable in winter, but it became obvious very quickly that the craggy, claustrophobic roads were dangerous in a way the foothills and wood had not been. It seemed they had no sooner begun the long uphill path when Erestor, a few yards ahead of Glorfindel, halted his horse in alarm and bent slowly over to survey whatever he'd found on or near the ground. There was only a wall of rock to one side of them and an abrupt, precarious-looking escarpment to the other, and so Glorfindel thought better of approaching to ask, instead warily wrapping his hand around the hilt of his sword.

 

"Wolf tracks," Erestor breathed, lifting his gaze from the ground, softened into mud by the morning dew that froze before dawn and then melted as the sun climbed towards its midday heights. Chancing a few paces ahead, Glorfindel glanced down, nonplussed.

 

"They're very small." His brow furrowed. The wolves the Gondolindrim had had occasion to detain leagues outside of the gates every now and again had been easily of a scale and a half of their horses, and too proud to suffer the subsistence-living that must have been the lifestyle afforded here, where there were few birds worth eating and even fewer deer. "If not for the size of the claws I would sooner take them for everyday animals."

 

"These beasts are closer to the were-creatures you fought in the First Age than to the thin, tick-bitten scavengers who know well enough to keep far out of sight," Erestor murmured, laying an indulgent hand on his horse's neck to soothe away the alarm building in its shoulders. "Whether these are the bastard get of the Maiar conscripted to Bauglir's service or a sickly cousin of theirs is anyone's guess; we called them wargs in the War."

 

Glorfindel grimaced, taking advantage of the arm's length of free space available to circle his own horse around for a look.

 

"Four different sets at least. Perhaps a pack. Let me take the lead."

 

"Why?"

 

"Because you have the benefit of reach and I do not." His horse's ears had pinned, though whether it was a response to the alien tone of the exchange occurring between the two elves or if it sensed something they did not, he couldn't be sure. "We might consider turning back and looking for a new—"

 

"There is exactly one way marked on this unforgivable excuse for a map, and I would like to return to Elrond before Dagor Dagorath," Erestor muttered, but he pulled around to let Glorfindel reassume the front position. "Stay near."

 

It was not the plan he wanted, but Glorfindel knew that proposing Erestor wait with the horses while he reconnoitered the path further ahead on foot would invite a row, so he cut his losses, tapping his horse to a canter. The mountain air was swollen with a malicious kind of quiet that seemed to insist on itself, swallowing the lesser sounds of pebbles and dust being displaced by the horse's hooves and the rattling of weapon sheaths or canteens against the brass studs of the horses' cruppers.

 

They rode on, and Glorfindel couldn't say he was sorry when the map took them away from the steep, sudden drops and into a narrower road, which was blessedly surmounted by a natural railing of rock on both sides that would have made it near impossible for even the unluckiest horse to slip over. The sun was hidden in places by tall gray spires and veiled by thick nets of fog in others, and had they not resigned themselves to a slower pace than they'd intended on setting out, Glorfindel knew Erestor would have been insufferably frustrated with the relatively minor perils of mountain-riding.

 

The sky—or what could be seen of it—darkened quickly. By this time the path had plateaued into something smooth and vast in every direction, and through the mist it had the air of an abandoned fairground, palm-sized rocks and shallow trenches full of ancient gravel strewn around like refuse. Erestor had taken advantage of the new space to trot up abreast of him, but didn't speak for some time.

 

"I find myself looking for the footprints of Araw," he admitted at last, laughing wryly, and the sound vanished into the open space like the fading last note of a flute.

 

"Some iterations of the story hold that it was Nahar who struck the peaks of the Hithaeglir into spires." Glorfindel smiled, too, and willed himself not to feel the sudden pressure in his throat that did not release him even after Erestor had turned his face back to the road. "My grandfather always maintained that Oromë could have been taken for any other man but for the light in his skin, but I enjoyed that version better, once I had the opportunity to hear it."

 

"They only rarely took up corporeal forms during the War." Here he glanced at Glorfindel, perhaps trying to gauge whether the subject would be a point of contention, but at Glorfindel's answering, expectant silence, continued. "I had occasion to meet Ingwion, once."

 

"Oh?" Glorfindel wasn't sure what his own expression looked like to Erestor; the sudden shift in topic had caught him off-guard, leaving him no time to temper out the note of discomfort that rose unbidden at the sound of his father's name, which he could now only barely match to a face. "Come to think of it, I have no idea if he survived the War or not."

 

Erestor paused, aware that he had overstepped a boundary. "He was present at the conclave Eönwë called at the very end, so I have to assume so. He was gallant, and a better fighter than I would have thought from a man who had never left Aman in his life."

 

"I'm glad to hear it," said Glorfindel, mouth tight at the corners.

 

"My apologies, I didn't realize it would be—"

 

Glorfindel winced. Being earnest and diplomatic had always come very easily to him, and he had long suspected Erestor, in the infancy of their relationship, loathed this particular trait of his personality, but he could see the effort for what it was, knew it for the awkwardly-conducted attempt to fill in the gaps of their understanding of each other's origins that he meant it to be.

 

"No, it is only—" He stopped, discomfited and unsure of how to proceed. "I hadn't time to go home when Námo released me. I was in Tirion for a night and then I was on a ship by midday. Were I to return to Ingwë's house tomorrow, I would find it less a home than the camp we left."

 

Beneath him, his horse flared her nostrils, craning her neck against the sudden tightening of Glorfindel's white-knuckled grip on her mane, which he relaxed with an apologetic stroke. He could feel Erestor looking at him, but he seemed to think better of going any deeper into the subject than he had probably intended to.

 

Acting before Erestor could finish mounting his retreat was crucial if he wanted to keep the ground they'd gained together in the last few days, but he took a breath to center himself to speak, and a sound, no louder than a rush of air, dissonant from the general tempo of the silence that had followed them into the peaks, seemed to echo in the pass. They met eyes, their horses halting mid-step. Erestor unlatched his spear from the holster at his back with one fluid, soundless movement. Glorfindel swept around to put his back to Erestor's, the tips of his fingers at rest on the pommel of his sword. Time passed, marked only by the slow, chimeric movement of the fog rolling down the slopes in white drifts in time with the descent of night, but everything was still again.

 

It was Erestor who moved first, though he kept his spear in hand. "Another hour and we should stop for the night," he murmured, though there was a marked unease in him that Glorfindel felt tenfold. Though reluctant to abandon the advantage of level ground in case of confrontation, he waited for Erestor to gain enough ground to leave a buffer of space between them, then he nudged his horse back to the path. The feeling of imminence had not left him.


	3. the by-road

The pass slowly gave way to another steep decline, then flattened off into another, slightly more narrow enclosed space of rock the color of wet clay, its floor bisected by a long sump of water no wider than the blade of a carving knife. Their horses, shiny with sweat and irritably rolling their shoulders, watered themselves at it and then lumbered towards a spot of bare rock to huddle together, as reluctant to sleep as their minders but not so much that it took them more than a few minutes before they were dozing as quietly as two very tired horses could doze.

 

Neither elf had said anything to the other since the incident in the pass. Erestor, perennially unable to bear being idle, set himself to the task of refilling waterskins, fed the horses, and then lowered himself beside the rill to do whatever else. Glorfindel had taken up the mouth of the path, happy, despite the dull ache in his legs, to be on his own feet again.

 

"If there was anything there it would have mounted an assault by now," said Erestor, sitting on what looked like a tree stump ossified into rock, his deep blue cloak, torn at the hem where he'd caught it on a barberry shrub a few days before, laid out over his knees. There was an eyelash-thin scrap of silver between his fingers, which he was currently trying to thread despite the net of darkness. "I'll take the first watch tonight, come here."

 

As much as Glorfindel wanted to argue for it, there was no point. The prescience he had gained in the transition from bodiless spirit to bodied elf was vague and abstract at the best times, and indistinguishable from natural worry at the worst times. But more than that, the quiet had given him ample opportunity to dwell on the issue seemingly compressing his ribcage from all sides whenever there was a lull long enough to allow his mind to drift back to it, and the reason was looking right at him with the same piercing stare that had unsettled him his first luckless foray into Ereinion's council chamber.

 

There was a paucity of natural light to be had, and what starlight was strong enough to break through the tarp of mist sat weakly over the stream. But Erestor was beautiful in it even with the grime of weeks of travel on his neck and hands, the needle flashing every time he drew it up for a new stitch. Neither of them had been considered handsome back in Lindon—Glorfindel because the long years of intermarriages had slowly changed the general aesthetic ideal, which often earned him the dreaded 'classic beauty' descriptor, often said in conjunction with some iteration of, ' _Well, he has a_ kind _face,_ ' and Erestor because he was, it must be admitted, terminally plain—but Glorfindel could see the calluses in his palms and over the joints of his fingers, and the scar that ran from the nape of his neck to his throat whose origins he had never discussed, and he wanted again.

 

"Fine," he sighed finally, just to keep Erestor from _looking_ at him like he could peruse what was in his brain at his leisure. "Take a bit of miruvor before you sleep; we have enough to see us through, and we probably won't need it on the return journey anyway."

 

Erestor frowned, then leaned over to the arrangement of their packs, liberated from the horses' harnesses for use as pillows later on. "Is that in mine or yours?"

 

"Mine—you might as well put it in yours, I need to find a good rock to bring back to Elrond."

 

There came a long, resigned sigh from Erestor's side of the camp. "It could have been far worse, he once asked me to bring him a moth from Eryn Galen."

 

"I wonder at the size of the net you used."

 

"Worse, I had to use a bolas. The kind for large birds. Our Nandorin escort thought it was great fun, they made an evening competition of it." His task completed, he tucked the needle out of sight, then wound the rest of the thread up and set his kit away, the glow of the miruvor turning his skin a rich indigo color where the light coalesced inside the bottle as he tucked that into his pack, too. "Then we get home eight months later and his first complaint is that I didn't bring back a live specimen."

 

"You probably could have taken a live specimen and ridden it home."

 

They laughed, and for a brief instant the night didn't feel so oppressive. Glorfindel bid him good night and moved towards the horses, stretching out to lay supine with his sword still in arm's reach, his sleep shallow and marked by intermittent periods of consciousness for use in checking in on the horses, who slept placidly beside him, and Erestor, who did not. Once he opened his eyes and found Erestor making use of the water to bathe with a clean fold of tow linen and a vial of oil, his hair unbound and pitch black but for the thin blue nimbus around his crown where the moonlight hit him, but Glorfindel turned and willed himself back to sleep, far from ready to interrogate the issues a clearer memory of this would cause once he was fully awake.

 

The rest of the night passed in nonevent. Glorfindel whiled away the hours of his watch in a bath, too, or as much of one as could be had with ice-cold water and only half of the vial Erestor had thought to pack, re-braided his hair, then woke the other three as soon as dawn was visible over the crest of rock. In the morning light, the plateau looked like the broken bottom of a ceramic jug, its serrated sides jabbing the sky.

 

They rode on. Their path took them up a constant acclivity into the peaks, and there was no denying that the mood had been weighted down by the feeling of uneasiness that came on the heels of the incident in the first pass. Worse was that similar had happened several times since, and more than once Glorfindel looked back and found Erestor's gaze riveted to some overhang, one hand absently on his weapon, but all attempts to scout ahead or behind had ended in nothing, and though Glorfindel couldn't deny that each episode of errant sounds like shifting gravel behind them, or the vague suggestion of the scent of something unwholesome carried to them on the wind only served to make him less and less certain that everything was as right as they both wanted to believe it was.

 

No more than half a day from Caradhras, they were stopped by the eerily synchronized reaction of both horses shuddering beneath them. The Hithaeglir were as silent as they had ever been all around them.

 

"We're being followed," murmured Erestor, no more than three hand spans away from Glorfindel, and in that instant he seemed to regain the serenity he had lost to the frustration at himself for being so put off by the subtle evidence that had, only moments before, been too small and too inconsistent to be just causes for alarm. Glorfindel glanced over a shoulder at the uneven track behind them, oddly glad to finally have a name for the fear that had waited in the back of his mind for weeks.

 

"It seems so," he affirmed with a low, breezy hum, aware that it was only by virtue of the narrowness of the road that they were likely still safe. "Well, they aren't goblins, whatever they are. Their woodcraft is decent enough that we haven't noticed them in the days they must have been trailing us."

 

"No, it's almost certainly the warg pack we saw early on." Erestor took his gelding's mane and urged him on, anticipating Glorfindel's bid for the rear guard now that it was evident a sallier was all but inevitable. "This must be a leisure campaign for them or they would have come upon us the first night."

 

"Mm, that's not at all heartening. How do we lure them out?"

 

" _Should_ we lure them out?" Glorfindel's mare flared her nostrils, but seemed to gather her strength again, retaking her former stride in time with Erestor's horse behind them. "It's likely their priority is the horses, I suppose."

 

"All the same, better on our terms than theirs."

 

Erestor did not reply, and they rounded a tight bend, the cover here more sparse and limited to what sad, thin vegetation could survive the hard air and harder earth. Perhaps it was as good as any place to initiate a confrontation, though Glorfindel knew in light of the horse's handicap the odds would be heavily tipped in the wolves' favor should it come to that. The feeling of hesitation that preceded this battle felt utterly foreign to his own nature, but in his hindbrain he suspected it had more to do with Erestor's participation than it did with anything of his own fight-readiness.

 

"They will send out a scout first," he said, his tone conveying that it was more thinking out loud than anything, but with no personal experience to go on, Glorfindel was obliged to defer to Erestor in this matter. "We might be able to avoid a full attack if we pick it off before the pack can follow."

 

There was a superior option evident to Glorfindel immediately, though he knew, his fingers tightening in frustration on the gentle rein that had sat mostly unused for the trip, that Erestor would resist it. "Then go ahead on foot. I will keep the horses here. Take up a perch, watch the road."

 

"Are you asking me to do this as a friend, or telling me as my captain?"

 

Glorfindel smiled, but it felt ersatz on his face, as bitter as a lie. "I trust that you have as many years of experience fighting as I do, Erestor, but please. This is not principle, this is practical."

 

They stared at each other a moment, unblinking, and it took all of Glorfindel's willpower to keep from even considering in the vaguest way the possibility that he might relent and offer to go forward in Erestor's place, knowing Erestor would latch to the most miniscule suggestion of weakness. It paid off. Erestor finally scowled and dismounted, unstrapping his quiver from the horse and briskly jamming an armguard over his wrist.

 

"If I perceive there is anything wrong, I will act as I think is necessary to protect us both," he warned, bumping his cheek against his horse's in parting.

 

"As any good soldier would do. For the time being, keep to the plan."

 

But Erestor had already turned and was disappearing into the dust of the road, and again, there was a feeling of ill omen over Glorfindel that lingered long after the three of them had lost sight of him.

 

* * *

 

 

Glorfindel didn't see Erestor for two days. Every moment of it he was conscious of the possibility that the sound of an arrow being loosed by his ear would be the only warning he would have before he found himself nose-to-nose with a warg, but with each succeeding hour his thoughts turned with greater preoccupation to Erestor, who had not taken any other supplies beyond a corner of hard tack, his waterskin, and his bow. Unburdened by the rough pace of the last few weeks, he was not forced to stop to make a camp for the horses to recover, though he could feel even his own permissive body begin to protest the length of the ride; his thighs ached, his neck was iron-stiff, and his heart, ever unwilling to let Glorfindel go without the occasional punch to remind him it was there, gave a few quick, subdued beats in his ribcage every so often.

 

But by and large it was as it always had been—they went up inclines, down brief drops that surged up into ridges so high that the fog seemed to melt into the clouds, and at least, he thought, the air was fresher and the distant dread that had been his companion since they had first come upon the range had finally departed him, but it was a weak consolation in the lee of Erestor's absence.

 

A shrill, high call split the air. For a moment Glorfindel took it for the cue he had been waiting for, thinking it odd that the horses had not balked, but he reached for his sword in time to catch the culprit floating overhead on two massive wings with their tips like fire in the noon sunlight and immediately aborted the movement, laughing incredulously despite himself. The eagle, sighting the banner of Glorfindel's golden hair against the uniformity of the rock, turned and regarded him in debate a long moment, circled him once, and then lowered herself to perch on an outcropping, as tall as the ancient, twisted corpse of whatever poor tree had once tried to make the dirt beside it home.

 

She was not quite so massive as Thorondor, Glorfindel thought—in fact she was no bigger than the smallest of the scouts the Gondolindrim had plied for news with sheep and textiles (for use, he had supposed but never asked, in lining nests) in the eyries behind the city. But the eagle canted her head and bent down to lock their eyes, and he felt homesick in a way he had never thought himself able to feel before. If not for the make of his armor and the single banner of Elrond's sigil on his saddle this might be another routine briefing, Erestor and the Valley and Ereinion a distant dream, and after this he and Egalmoth would wend down to the bakehouses in the Market Square—

 

"Well met," was all she said, her voice the distant rumble of thunder. On her neck there were patches of skin barren of feathers, stitched over with faded lines, souvenirs of the same war that had marked everyone he'd known in his second life. "It is not often travelers like you attempt this road alone."

 

"And for good reason, I have discovered," he said, beaming in delight though his thoughts had gone to Erestor again. "Your name, lady?"

 

The eagle narrowed her eyes in thought, and Glorfindel wondered if she had ever needed to converse this way with someone whose first instinct might have been to read such a slight gesture as antagonistic. Envoys of Manwë though they were, a particularly hungry one might well knock one off one's horse and cart it off for a meal, especially if there was some slight given to necessitate recompense, so such fear was not always entirely unfounded.

 

"Urthol," she grunted at last, if an eagle could grunt. "I know you."

 

That was a phrase he'd heard more than enough to last him six lifetimes, and though his usual response to that kind of thing was a friendly salute and a charitable attempt to keep from grimacing, her approach had inspired in him a latent horror that perhaps his recent inattention to his duty and the painful division of his heart had incited Manwë to anger, that she was here to deliver a formal reprimand. But she only fluffed her feathers against the chilly breeze, drawing back once she'd gotten a good enough look at him with the air of a battleship ready for the open sea.

 

"There is a stench on the air." If he'd known her temper better, he might have been able to tell if she'd meant it to be a statement of fact or a conversational lead-in, but she solved the issue for him by continuing, one talon stretching forward to dig a track into the soft dirt beneath her, an idle gesture popular among eagles, which would have been amusing if the rut in the ground was not, unsettlingly, large and deep enough for an elf body. "I would caution you, Ingwion, if I thought you would take my advice."

 

"Should I not, lady?"

 

Urthol scowled at him a moment, then turned her gaze up to some indeterminate direction. A high place, naked rock, but somehow he knew she meant to indicate Erestor, engrossed in his own errand and likely somewhere far out of eyeshot even for her.

 

"I did not say that you should not, only that you would not," she said, jerking her neck back up so she could look down on him—figuratively as much as literally. "Your story is well known to me and the Firstborn are not famous for their foresight. But I will give it nonetheless: do not take the unnecessary risk. Even now they are hard upon your heels and wait only for the opportunity—be prudent. My master would see you back with the scion of Lúthien soonest."

 

"I cannot say whether I will be any less hapless than any other man in my position, but thank you all the same, lady." He saluted her in the style of the Golodhrim, one hand over his heart, and watched her cant her head again in answer. Then she opened the wings that had been tightly furled to her back, abandoning her perch. In the quiet that assumed the space she left, he wondered if she'd just been looking to show off, but he pushed the thought away with a tired grin down at his mare's neck, and they moved on, Urthol no more than a mote of dust doing cartwheels somewhere nearly out of sight.

 

Still, at least he knew where he stood with their pursuers; he was not easier, but better able to accept the eventuality now, glad, if for nothing else, that the ability to scale the smaller, tighter paths on foot had granted Erestor a celerity and a range of movement denied Glorfindel with the horses. In the increasingly numerous moments of doubt as Glorfindel squinted down at the heavily-edited map, the knowledge that at least Erestor would be out of the immediate fray heartened him considerably.

 

Evening brought him to another smooth, well-situated landing. The horses had not settled in the aftermath of Urthol's visit, but he moved them to a far wall, the way impeded by several large, ugly boulders, and set himself to waiting. He didn't need Elrond's Maia blood or Erestor's uncanny omniscience to be able to sense with great clarity what waited on the other side of the advancing night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate exposition too


	4. the inroad

As it happened, Glorfindel didn't need to wait long.

 

He was conscious of Erestor, who had set himself up on a distant escarpment that faced the rock chamber Glorfindel had hidden the horses in, a thin slip of wind-chapped skin and mud-daubed leathers. His cloak had been relegated to some hidden corner, and more than once Glorfindel had tried to glean from his comportment how close their audience was, how many there might have been. It was undoubtedly a boon that he'd secured a vantage point that allowed him to supervise the pass unimpeded, but in the building adrenaline rush, he was more and more uncertain that it wouldn't have been better to let Erestor bully him into switching duties.

 

But they were here and there was so little time left to worry about the inevitable. When Erestor rose and moved to the very lip of the rock and bent his bow, Glorfindel chanced only a half-second's sidelong glance and surreptitiously wrapped a hand around the shaft of the spear Erestor had left behind, hidden by the bulwark of their supply packs, and feigned inattention.

 

The nightly mist had begun to descend. There was the non-sound of Erestor's bowstring being released, and then a high, whining cry that answered it almost immediately. Erestor managed another before the sound of advancing footfalls abruptly cut off, and Glorfindel rose, prepared to charge the pass, but there came another cacophonous scream behind him; Erestor's gelding rocketed forward, pitching confusedly to one side and then breaking out into a sprint back the way they had come. Behind him, a streak the color of mud leapt over the back wall, and Glorfindel was very aware of the heinous misstep they had just taken.

 

The warg in pursuit of the horse halted, meeting eyes with Glorfindel, seemingly unaware of the other horse nervously pawing at the air behind them. _Better_ , he thought, and he felt the world beyond his line of vision melt to nothing, saw the wolf draw up and lunge at him like the entire scene was someone else's waking dream.

 

It missed, its jaws snapping shut with an audible report of rotting teeth knocking into one another. Habit told Glorfindel to take up a low guard, but Erestor's voice echoed in his memory— _Not the were-creatures you fought in the First Age_ —and in a moment of inattention was forced to sidestep when the wolf rallied and made another wild, artless bid for his throat. He sucked in a breath, and drove the point of the spear into an exposed shoulder, the weapon sinking down to the upper grip with the force of his impulsion.

 

There were footsteps advancing on him, and he knew they were Erestor's, but his own mare began to shriek again and he caught sight of the third warg rolling her over with a single balletic bound, and suddenly her belly was open and he could smell the bloody musk of the greasy pelt under his hands, his chest tight. Erestor shouldered him away from the spear and wrenched it out of the warg carcass, his bow long gone.

 

"How many—" Glorfindel breathed, willing the pulse of anger back, pulling his sword into his hand and ripping the scabbard off his hips, ready to advance on the wolf standing over his horse's prone body. Panting from the exertion of covering the space between the escarpment and Glorfindel, Erestor stumbled back, his right shoulder to the back of Glorfindel's left.

 

"Four," he gasped, and Glorfindel wished there had even been a second to spare, his gaze riveted to the wolf no more than six running paces from him, its black claws like gaffs buried in his horse's throat. "Two from the left, they must have used a byway to get behind you. The last might run."

 

 _We can't take that chance_ , Glorfindel thought, and he wondered if Erestor heard it, because he went silent, his brows knitted in concentration. "Can you—"

 

"Yes," breathed Erestor, and though Glorfindel wasn't sure what he had been about to ask, or that Erestor had the faintest idea either, he knew they both meant it.

 

They parted. Glorfindel met the beast halfway and let the warg circle him, hyperaware of the gelding bleating in the distance, and then when it abruptly stopped, the last scream trembling in the air. The creature had crouched low, its head sunken beneath its shoulders in preparation to spring; had it been standing, they might have been of competing heights. But more unsettling than their fine-tuned assault had been, he found the dumb, bestial concentration in its eyes brought him closer to fear than he had been since last he had fought on a mountainside an age ago. There was nothing so determined as an enemy who was emboldened by pain and fear.

 

 _Charge me_ , he willed it, anxious to shed this last obstacle between himself and Erestor, who, frustratingly, fought without the sounds of exertion common among men who perhaps possessed less awareness of themselves in battle. Feeling himself rapidly losing coherent thought to motor reflexes, he shifted his weight to his toes, and let the wolf make impact.

 

He could feel the wolf's hide part around his sword, subtle and untroubled like the dip of an oar into still water. The blade slid with cruel, aching determination into its chest, and Glorfindel forced the momentum of the wolf's jump into rolling the two of them against the rock, intent on propelling himself away from the body as soon as possible, but he felt his weapon catch, and he swore—the cutting edge had notched where it grazed its sternum, and there was warmth running down the crimp between his breastplate and the belt over his tunic.

 

Atop him, the warg spasmed, still impaled, its mouth tightening impossibly harder and then relaxing of all strength altogether. His inactive arm did not hurt, but he tried to lift it and found the dead weight of the kill required a little bit more finesse to get out from under; Glorfindel gasped, flipped onto his stomach, and tentatively sought out the handle of his sword where he'd let it go beneath the warg, though a small voice in what area of his brain could be coaxed to supply rational thought, that he was as useless to it as it was to him.

 

Half in a daze, he put his boot to its neck and eased the sword out of its body, aware of the winter air on the plane of his stomach exposed by the bite, but not of the blood coursing out from behind the palm he had absently pressed to the tear. His skin felt thin and ragged like pasteboard. There was soft pressure nudging at his hand—

 

_Damn it._

 

The faraway snarling of the remaining wolf was inaudible, or else the tide of its fight with Erestor had drawn them out further than Glorfindel's range of hearing. His options, already pathetically few in number, were rapidly decreasing each half-second of indecision, benumbed, his pulse beating percussively in his ears; he knew if he looked down now he would buckle where he stood and likely not rise again. His gambit had worked, but not with any degree of real success, and the sting of it almost made him laugh as he took one incremental step in the direction of their supplies, which lay perfectly unmolested by the surrounding battle, then another, each foot of ground gained an impossible accord between his limits and the strength of his willpower.

 

He dropped his sword, the blade matte in the bright moonlight for the rank coat of blood still trailing down the keen edge, and willed his fingers to still. Every second had to count. Firmly not thinking of the searing heat in his gut as he knelt to sift through the heap, he tugged out the longest length of tow they had brought along for ligatures and bound the wound back as well as his clarity of mind allowed.

 

 _One breath on the other_ , he thought, willing the tremor out of his hands long enough to belt his tunic as tightly as the strap allowed. His palms, shiny and pale with cold beads of sweat, looked foreign and out of focus when he turned them over to examine the perfect imprint of his sword hilt pressed into the skin.

 

“Oh, you’re still standing,” he heard Erestor half-laughed out, winded by the fight but whole as far as Glorfindel could see. How long had he been standing there? “My horse escaped alive, but yours...”

 

Glorfindel’s lips went tight, and he pushed the thought of her out of his mind, knowing that it was only by virtue of the icy, searing heat in his core that he lacked the diligence to be as unsettled by the thought of her eviscerated body laying only a few paces away from them now as he should have been. “We have yours, he is all we need,” he amended, sucking a breath in through his teeth and turning to switch his gaze to the pile of their supplies. Pretending he didn’t see the liquid shock of red running down the gentle slope from the direction of his felled horse took enough of his attention away from the immediacy of the wound, but the reprieve was brief. “The convoy should have been here by now.”

 

Erestor absently rotated his wrist, a gesture Glorfindel associated so strongly with the younger set of his soldiers, still acclimating to the hazards of handling polearms that he wished they were back in Lindon, that there was something as warm and familiar as home waiting for them at the other end of the journey instead of bare-bones encampments and the promise of a bitter winter.

 

“Regardless, they are not,” he replied at length, closing the distance and kneeling to help gather their packs. His eyes alighted on Glorfindel a moment, but if he smelled new blood, or if he was suspicious of Glorfindel’s sudden distance, his drive to leave the area superseded it. “We can both go ahead on foot, pack the horse down. I see no other alternative.”

 

The thought of walking the Hithaeglir with his middle half vivisected sent a spike of apprehension through Glorfindel, the unnatural chill gathering in him swelling as though encouraged by the promise of more pain. His moment of silent indecision cost him: Erestor turned his head and seemed to divine the story he had chosen to ignore only a few minutes before out of his pallor, the hand nervously pressed to his stomach, and his lips curled back into a snarl.

 

“Where is the wound, Ingwion?” he demanded, taking a step forward but refraining from touching for the time being. Glorfindel took an abortive step back, but ceded the necessity a second later, the hand that had been cradling the incision dropping firmly to his side. Again, Erestor took up the difference, daring a touch no more insistent than the briefest press of fingertips over the material of his tunic. Glorfindel shuddered. Even in the raw, angry pulse of pain that stirred in response, Erestor’s proximity made him hungry for what he had been too cowardly to pursue a week ago, the threshold of mortality he had been content to forget so soon into his second life too near for comfort.

 

“You let me drink all of the miruvor.” Erestor’s voice was a low hiss, but he withdrew his hand, casting a look around their makeshift camp as if searching for an obvious answer to his next move.

 

“I didn’t forsee this.”

 

“No, because that would mean your foresight was actually useful.”

 

“It is done, Erestor,” he sighed, watching him motion over his horse, distantly wondering how he was still standing when his legs felt like tinder sticks and the world had teetered a few degrees off its axis. “Give me your bow and take the horse. I can wait on that outcropping; it is high up and defensible and Galadriel’s escort must not be far off by now.”

 

For a few seconds he expected the explosive burst of anger he could see cooking beneath Erestor’s skin. Part of him welcomed the inevitability—that they had come out of one danger did not mean there were not others waiting for them further up the road, and in his inattention he had consigned Erestor to having to deal with them alone.

 

But the other man only relaxed, the anger that had been roiling out of every pore in his skin cooling to something unreadable. He didn’t turn to look at Glorfindel again.

 

“I can’t leave you here,” he insisted, so low that for a moment Glorfindel took it for the flutter of wind over the rocks beneath them.

 

“I will make it a command if I must.”

 

Erestor whipped his head around then, stalking forward to seize him by the shoulder. The corners of Glorfindel’s vision blurred, his already precariously-won balance offset, and he felt Erestor’s grip tighten as a reflex to keep him standing. What he had been preparing to say, Glorfindel couldn’t tell—the extent of the damage was obvious enough to both of them now, and he was glad, for a second, that at least Erestor was practical enough to see his point. He sighed, then shifted forward to pull Glorfindel’s arm over his shoulders, no longer as visibly furious.

 

Despite their massive height disparity, they made it up the ridge Erestor had used as a bird’s nest in the initial fray, his cloak still spread over the ground, as he had last seen it but for a few hashmarks of dirt here and there. The wound throbbed, upset by even the comparatively gentle motion of walking forward; Glorfindel didn’t realize how much of his weight Erestor must have been supporting until they mounted the last few feet of the incline and he let him down onto the floor, feeling the ground rush up to meet him. There was a flurry of movement from Erestor that he could not track, but by and by he felt one of their packs slide beneath his neck, his own cloak folded over his chest.

 

When he looked up again, everything was still: the sky had not lightened at all, though it felt like it had been hours since they’d encountered the wargs. Erestor was kneeling in the narrow leftover space beside him, but making sense of his expression was beyond his ability now.

 

“Elrond would understand,” he murmured, half as an attempt at easing his obvious guilt, half as a goad. _I will not die here anyway_ came to his mind, but his tongue felt like lead in his mouth and he supposed it might not have sounded very convincing even if he’d made the effort. The danger, they both knew, was not so much the injury as his defenselessness.

 

“It is not Elrond’s reproof that keeps me here.” Erestor scowled, lightly flicking Glorfindel’s cheek when his eyelids descended again. “You owe me money, anyway.”

 

Glorfindel laughed, thinking it worth the crippling pain. “If I paid you for every pot I lost in Lindon, my coffers would be empty.”

 

Silence. Erestor made an attempt at a grin, but it dissolved away when Glorfindel took a sharp, hitching breath. His hands alighted over the wound, comfortingly firm when Glorfindel folded one of his own over them.

 

“If I have not found them by the time I reach the foothills, I will come back,” he sighed, tentatively freeing his hands and pushing a runaway strand of hair out of Glorfindel’s face. It was a coordinated effort of mind and body to keep his eyes open, though Erestor’s form, backlit by the moon, wavered at the edges. Then, perhaps as an afterthought, he leaned over, and Glorfindel could see what lay in the next half-second, one hand reaching up to bracket the back of Erestor’s neck.

 

The skin at Erestor’s throat was soft and warm and he pressed into it as well as their nearness allowed, Erestor’s lips at his temple, and he knew he would suffer an eternity of doing the last two hours over if it meant he could have this again and again. Insistent, he pushed to reorient the Noldo over him, and for a second it seemed Erestor was compliant—but his mouth touched the corner of Erestor’s and he pulled away with a low, angry sound made through grit teeth.

 

“Stay alive, Ingwion,” he spat, a tremulous note softening the imperative, and when Glorfindel looked up again he had vanished into the night, and there were not even the distant sounds of hoofbeats to mark his departure by.


End file.
